Fall Bulletin Board: An Easy Tutorial for Fall Board Ideas

Easily Make a 3-D Fall Bulletin Board for your Kiddo’s School!

A few weeks ago, my son’s teacher asked if anyone could help make a fall bulletin board. I immediately jumped in and said I would be happy to assist.  She just got back from maternity leave, and coming from a background of a teacher, I know how overwhelming that can be. 

Also, I jump at any excuse to use my cutting machine.  🙂  So, I thought I would document the process of how I made the fall bulletin board and also give you all the free cut files if anyone wants to create the same style in their class.

I wanted to decorate the fall bulletin board on a budget as much as possible, seeing that it would be switched out again in just a few weeks for winter.  This entire bulletin board was made for FREE!  You heard me right…. FREE!  I used supplies that I already had on hand or could quickly get from the school.  Let me show you how I did it.

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SUPPLIES

Blue Butcher Paper

Green Butcher Paper

Brown Butcher Paper

Red Butcher Paper

Yellow Butcher Paper

Orange Butcher Paper

*all the butcher paper was from the teacher work room at the school*

Brown Construction Paper (or Card stock)

*grab 2 different shades of brown if you want the top layer on the acorn*

Yellow Card stock

Stapler and lots of staples

Transfer Tape

12×12 Yellow Adhesive vinyl

FREE Acorn and Quote SVG file (free download at the bottom)

Now Onto the Step by Step Directions:

When making the bulletin board, work from the back forward.  First, cover 3/4 of the board (the top 3/4) with blue butcher paper for the sky.  Then, it is time to create the tree.  You could do the grass next, but I wanted the look of the tree growing out from behind the grass, not in front.  This was totally just a personal preference.

To create the look of a 3-D tree, take the brown butcher paper and crinkle it.  This will give the paper texture.  Then open it up and start stapling. Attach it to the wall vertically, so it is taller than it is wide (to look like a tree trunk)  I stapled one side first, then poofed (is that even a word?) it out in the middle and stapled it on the other side.

Then to add the branches, instead of crinkling the paper, twist the paper.  this will give the look of movement and growing outward.

Once the branches and the tree trunk are the way that you want, it’s time to add in the grass.  To give the grass a little bit of a different texture than the tree, I folded the grass butcher paper accordion style.

Then, I opened it up and crumpled it randomly.  Start on one side of the bulletin board and staple the green paper, scrunching and stapling as you go.  Then I folded the top of the green grass down a little just to give it that extra 3-D feel.

Now it’s time for the leaves.  You are going to use the same technique from the tree and grass to create the leaves.  First, tear the butcher paper into big squares.  The crinkle and crunch to give them some texture.  Next, start on one side and staple to the board.  Fluff it out and staple the other side.  Alternate the colors to give the effect of fall leaves.

I also added a coordinating fall border from my son’s teacher, to help frame out the look.  The foundation of the board is now set and it is ready to have the words and kid’s names added to it.

Here are two of my helpers as I was getting the tree background ready:

Now it’s time to put the cutting machine to work.  Measure out how big you will want your letters to be on the fall bulletin board.  Then take the FREE SVG file (download it below) and size appropriately.  If using card stock, you will have to cut the design in sections.  I ended up cutting it a few letters at a time.

Check out the live video of the letters being cut here:

I then cut out one acorn for each student in the class.  I only used the back layer of the acorn in the file, because I didn’t have two different browns on hand, but it looks cute both ways.  Also as a tip, you could always laminate the letters and acorns (if you don’t personalize them) so you could keep them for next year, or for a different board.

I wanted each acorn to have the name of a student in the class on it.  I used one 12×12 sheet of yellow adhesive vinyl and all 19 names fit perfectly.

Then, I weeded the names and using this transfer tape I applied one name to each acorn.  It was really crucial that I used this method to peel up the transfer tape so the paper didn’t rip.  Also when I applied the names I made sure to vary their placement so all the acorns wouldn’t have to be hung the exact same way on the board.

Now, all that is left is to staple the words and acorns to fill in the rest of the board.  I laid all the letters out on the floor in front of the board first just to make sure I had the correct spacing then just stapled them up one by one.  After the words were up there, I arranged the acorns to fill in any missing gaps or holes.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the final result and plus that quote is such a great reminder that we all start somewhere.  What do you think?

Are you a crafter looking for more fun fall svgs and tutorials? If so, you will definitely like these blog posts.

Free Fall SVG

Wood Turkey Craft

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE QUOTE AND ACORN SVG FILE HERE

Also, make sure if you create a similar fall bulletin board share a pic over in our Facebook group!  We absolutely love to see your cutting machine creativity in action.  ‘Til next time, happy crafting, cutting, and chaos!